discussion – Broken City Lab

August 5, 2013July 5, 2018

Watershed+ Residency Phase 1 (August 7th-15th)

Watershed+ Residency (Phase 1)

August 7th – 15th, 2013 at Ralph Klein Park and the Surrounding Area, Calgary, Alberta

Watershed+, hosted by the Utilities and Environment Protections department of the City of Calgary, is a unique art program which embeds artists and their individual processes within the Calgary watershed. We will be heading to Ralph Klein Park for Phase 1 of the project this Wednesday, August 7th, to visit the studio and surrounding wetlands, and to start thinking through our project happening next summer. We’ll be staying until August 15th, during which time we’ll be asking many questions, exploring the social and physical boundaries of the region, and using this information to inform our future project at Ralph Klein Park. Stay tuned for more info!

Unfortunately, CIVIC SPACE WILL BE CLOSED UNTIL AUGUST 19th, but please register and stop by for the ACWR workshop, Modes of Documentary, happening here tomorrow, August 6th at 4pm and the Interactive Media & Video Installation workshops happening August 13th and 20th.

November 5, 2012July 5, 2018

A Look at Four Weeks into All Tomorrow’s Problems

Four weeks into All Tomorrow’s Problems. We’re tackling lots of big, complex problems with big, eager imaginations. Interested in joining us? The next ATP is on Monday, November 12 at 7pm at CIVIC SPACE.

Last Monday’s topic, drawn from a conversation about the recent announcement of a 28-year-old mayoral candidate in Detroit, focused on creating platforms for a series of future mayoral candidates in Windsor. The series of imaginary candidates were dreamed up in 20-year increments — a set of 28-year-old mayors, 48-year-old mayors, and 68-year-old mayors. If they ran for the top seat in the city, what would they note as their vision for the city? Each week we ask a question like that, and each week we take a lot of notes and thanks to our super great studio assistant, Laura, all of these notes are being scanned — I think we’re around 200+ pages so far.

The night runs for a quick hour and a half or so. Dan reads off the platform written by Sam for the 28-year-old mayoral candidate, as Kiki listens in.

Across the table, Nicole and Veronica wait for their turn.

Some of the platforms were ambitious and impossible, others were pragmatic and measured. Each revealed an interesting set of assumptions we bring when considering other people’s attitudes and concerns. That being said, the 28-year-old platforms were certainly the most expansive, and probably expensive.

Left-over candy beans from Sam’s opening for her Civic Boredom project she completed with students from Forster.

Then, the 48-year-old mayoral candidate pledge. Above my notes on a campaign for the “middle of the road.”

Some of the most interesting ideas came from the conversations after everyone’s platform was read aloud. Above, the idea for a roving legal service that occupies Transit Windsor buses came up after discussing Sam’s requests for more legal services.

After we made our way through the three rounds, we spread out all the platforms and decided to each choose one pledge from each age bracket — that is, we could each select one pledge from the 28, 48, and 68 year old candidate.

Tough decisions.

Then, we compiled, Sam took notes to make the resulting super platform … it was totally fun to compile this and really generated a kind of discussion I know I haven’t had before, at least so explicitly, around not just a vision for the future of Windsor (and it’s problems), but really where competing visions may arise and what we can do with them.

1. Property tax break for everyone under 39. Buy a house and start a family in Windsor before you’re 40 and you pay no property tax.

2. Make Transit Windsor free by creating a small surcharge for users of EC Row — think of the 407 — but more reasonable.

3. Make a Windsor-specific currency.

4. Light rail for all surrounding municipalities.

5. Very much building off the above, make real efforts to strengthen relationships with surrounding areas.

6. Become and own the title of Canada’s official gateway. Don’t wait for anyone to officially designate this.

7. Ongoing and constant urban planning summit.

8. Tax breaks for small businesses with articulated and documented job creation strategies.

9. Fix transit.

10. Slow Down Sundays — close Riverside Drive every Sunday for pedestrians.

11. Distributed mini-museums (maybe screens and apps) for history of Windsor and area.

12. Heated sidewalks and bus stations.

And here they wait for your perusal. We’re undecided of where’s this is leading (maybe a book, an exhibition, a series of posters, a bunch of PSAs, a political party?), but mostly we just really think these conversations should be happening a lot more often around everyone’s tables. We have to make a conversation about a long-view of the future of this city and urgent priority. Maybe the next week will be to write a manifesto or something. The next edition of All Tomorrow’s Problems: Monday, November 12 at 7pm.

August 5, 2011July 5, 2018

Keynotes Announced for Homework!

We are very pleased to announce our Keynote Speakers for Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices!

Gregory Sholette, Marisa Jahn, and Temporary Services (represented by Salem Collo-Julin) will join us on October 21 and 22, 2011 to deliver a keynote panel and round-table discussions.

There’s still time to register — and it’s free!

HOMEWORK: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices is four-day residency, two-day conference, and collaboratively-written publication aimed at generating conversation around the following:

alternative infrastructures,
radical collaboration,
social practice,
art implicated in social change,
neighbourhood-level activities,
city-wide imaginations,
site-specific curiosities,
tactical resistance,
new models for art education and research.

Facilitated by Broken City Lab, HOMEWORK calls on artists, scholars, writers, thinkers, and doers interested in any of the above to join us in Windsor, Ontario on October 21 and October 22, 2011.

Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, and founding member of Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D: 1980-1988), and REPOhistory (1989-2000). A graduate of The Cooper Union (BFA 1979), The University of California, San Diego (MFA 1995), and the Whitney Independent Studies Program in Critical Theory, his recent publications include Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture (Pluto Press, 2011); Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945 (with Blake Stimson for University of Minnesota, 2007); and The Interventionists: A Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (with Nato Thompson for MassMoCA/MIT Press, 2004, 2006, 2008), as well as a special issue of the journal Third Text co-edited with theorist Gene Ray on the theme “Whither Tactical Media.” Sholette recently completed the installation “Mole Light: God is Truth, Light his Shadow” for Plato’s Cave, Brooklyn, New York, and the collaborative project Imaginary Archive at Enjoy Public Art Gallery in Wellington New Zealand, and is currently working on an installation for the Queens Museum of Art, and the Tulca Arts Festival in Galway, Ireland. He is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Queens College: City University of New York (CUNY), has taught classes at Harvard, The Cooper Union, and Colgate University, and teaches an annual seminar in theory and social practice for the CCC post-graduate research program at Geneva University of Art and Design.

gregorysholette.com
darkmatterarchives.net

The editor of “Byproduct: On the Excess of Embedded Art Practices,”, Marisa Jahn is an artist, writer, and community organizer embedded in various social and economic justice groups since 2008. Her work has been presented at venues such as the MIT Museum, The Power Plant (Toronto), ICA Philadelphia, The National Fine Art Museum of Taiwan, New Museum (NYC), ISEA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Museum of Science, and more. A graduate of MIT and an artist in residence at MIT’s Media Lab, Jahn has been recognized as a leading educator by UNESCO and has been a CEC Artslink cultural fellow in Tajikistan, Estonia, and Russia. Her work has been written about in media such as The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Clamor, Punk Planet, Art in America, and Discovery Channel. In 2009, she co-founded REV-, an organization dedicated to socially-engaged art, design, and pedagogy; she is currently the Deputy Director at People’s Production House, a journalism training and production institute that works with low-wage workers, immigrants, and teens to produce groundbreaking news that has been seen and heard on BBC, ABC, PBS Newshour, Mother Jones, The Nation Magazine, The New York Times, and more.

marisajahn.com
rev-it.org
peoplesproductionhouse.org

Temporary Services is a group of three people: Brett Bloom (based in Copenhagen), Marc Fischer (based in Chicago), and Salem Collo-Julin (based in Philadelphia). They collaborate on producing projects, publications, events, and exhibitions. Making a distinction between art practice and other creative human endeavors is irrelevant to Temporary Services.

The group started as a storefront arts and events space in a working class neighborhood in Chicago in 1998. Since then, Temporary Services has been responsible for the publication of over 91 books and booklets (including 2003’s Prisoners’ Inventions and 2008’s Public Phenomena), and have created many projects in public and shared spaces, in spaces often dedicated to art and spaces often used for other things, and on the internet. Most recently, they participated in an exhibition on the Lower East Side organized by Creative Time. The members of Temporary Services founded Half Letter Press in 2008 as a experimental web store and publishing imprint in order to help support themselves and champion the work of others.

Salem Collo-Julin is a Chicago native. In addition to her work with Temporary Services, she writes, edits, and performs. She is a co-founder of The Free Store Chicago.

temporaryservices.org
halfletterpress.com
artandwork.us
http://thefreestorechicago.org/
halfletterpress.tumblr.com
publiccollectors.org
messhall.org
http://www.letsremake.info/
about.me/hollo

Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council, the University of Windsor’s School of Visual Arts, and our community partner the Art Gallery of Windsor.

September 22, 2009July 5, 2018

Humanities Week 2009: Urbanism in these Border Cities

This week is Humanities Week 2009, presented by Humanities Research Group (HRG), and it’s focusing on urbanism, cities, and the past and the future of Windsor / Detroit.

Here’s the rundown of the events, which I copied / cut / pasted, so please excuse the list:

Tuesday 22 September • Philosophers’ Café 8pm • Phog Lounge, 157 University Avenue West

Come participate in a wide-ranging discussion concerning cities, their possible futures, and the future of Windsor with Justin Langlois [Broken City Lab], Tom Lucier [Phog, tomlucier.com], Melinda Munro [City of Windsor], and Jeff Noonan [Philosophy, University of Windsor]. Cash bar.

Wednesday 23 September • MASSH Lecture 4.30pm • Room 1115, Medical Education Building, University of Windsor

In the first of the MASSH Lecture Series [Medical Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities], Steven Palmer, Canada Research Chair in the History of International Health with Steve Malone, graduate student, Department of History will speak on the history of medicine in Windsor and Detroit, in a talk entitled “Border Cities Medicine: Towards a History of Medical Practitioners in Windsor.” A free reception follows in the atrium of the Medical Education Building.

This event is co-sponsored by the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Windsor Programme, the Canada Research Chair in the History of International Health, and RREHS, Reason, Rhetoric, and Ethics in the Human Sciences.

Thursday 24 September • HRG Distinguished Speakers’ Series 7.30pm • Freed Orman Centre, Assumption University

Jerry Herron, professor of English and American Studies, Wayne State University, will talk on the contemporary history of Detroit. “Borderama Detroit” will explore the city as a spectacle, and what Detroit, that ‘life-in-death’ city, means for the future of urban areas around the world.

Friday 25 September • HRG Colloquium 10am • Location to be communicated

“How Not to See Detroit: What Tourists Always Get Wrong When They Come to Look at Us, and What One Got Exactly Right” is a wide-ranging discussion with Jerry Herron about Detroit and the way it has been documented by the photographer Corine Vermeulen-Smith. Seating is limited; contact the HRG office for more information and to register.

Tuesday 22 September • Philosophers’ Café 8pm • Phog Lounge, 157 University Avenue West – Come participate in a wide-ranging discussion concerning cities, their possible futures, and the future of Windsor with Justin Langlois [Broken City Lab], Tom Lucier [Phog, tomlucier.com], Melinda Munro [City of Windsor], and Jeff Noonan [Philosophy, University of Windsor]. Cash bar.

Wednesday 23 September • MASSH Lecture on the history of medicine in Windsor and Detroit, in a talk entitled “Border Cities Medicine: Towards a History of Medical Practitioners in Windsor.” Lecture 4.30pm • Room 1115, Medical Education Building, University of Windsor

Thursday 24 September • HRG Distinguished Speakers’ Series 7.30pm, Jerry Herron, professor of English and American Studies, Wayne State University, will give a talk entitled, “Borderama Detroit,” which will explore the city as a spectacle, and what Detroit, that ‘life-in-death’ city, means for the future of urban areas around the world. • Freed Orman Centre, Assumption University

Friday 25 September • HRG Colloquium 10am • Location to be communicated – “How Not to See Detroit: What Tourists Always Get Wrong When They Come to Look at Us, and What One Got Exactly Right” is a wide-ranging discussion with Jerry Herron about Detroit and the way it has been documented by the photographer Corine Vermeulen-Smith. Seating is limited; contact the HRG office for more information and to register.

There’s a lot going on this week, so contact HRG for more information on any specific part of the activity you see listed above, but plan to attend at least one of these events if your schedule permits!